--- title: "A Staggering Number of Gen Z Think AI Is Already Conscious" description: "Generation Z, or the cohort of people born between 1997 and 2012, has a lot of feelings about AI — and many of them think it's conscious." date: "2025-04-21" modified: "2025-04-21" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/gen-z-thinks-conscious-ai" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "ai consciousness" - "chatgpt" - "conscious ai" - "gen z" --- # A Staggering Number of Gen Z Think AI Is Already Conscious ![Generation Z, or the cohort of people born between 1997 and 2012, has a lot of feelings about AI — and many of them think it's conscious.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* Generation Z, or the cohort of people [born between 1997 and 2012](), has a [very weird relationship]() with artificial intelligence. In the latest sign of just how strange things are getting, a [new study]() by the paper-writing service EduBirdie found, upon asking 2,000 Gen Z-ers a battery of questions about AI, that a quarter believe the technology is "already conscious." What's more, 52 percent — or more than half of the respondents — think AI is not yet conscious but will become so in the years to come. Plus a whopping 58 percent of the Zoomers surveyed said they think the technology will "take over" the world, and 44 percent said they believe that takeover could happen within the next 20 years. Given those concerns, it's not that surprising that 69 percent of EduBirdie's survey respondents claimed they always say "please" and "thank you" to chatbots — a finding that jibes with [*TechRadar*'s late 2024 survey]() in which 67 percent of Americans and 71 percent of Brits polled said they are [polite to ChatGPT]() (terrifyingly, 12 percent of the 1,000 people *TechRadar* polled on both sides of the pond also said they're nice to OpenAI's chatbot in case it takes over the world.) The topic of AI consciousness is, and has for years, extremely contentious. Prior to ChatGPT's release turning OpenAI into a household name, one of the company's cofounders and former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, [cryptically claimed in a tweet]() that he thought "it may be that today's large neural networks are slightly conscious." That February 2022 tweet ended up [setting off a mini-maelstrom]() in the machine learning world as [researchers argued]() whether or not AI is conscious — or if it [could ever get that way]() at all. Though most experts agreed then (and continue to maintain) that AI isn't yet conscious, there have been notable detractors. A few months after Sutskever's infamous tweet, a Google engineer named [Blake Lemoine was ultimately fired]() and [disgraced]() after claiming in an [interview with the *Washington Post*]() that the tech giant's Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) had come to life. One thing's for sure: when we're dealing with advanced AI that's been designed to *act* like a human, like ChatGPT and its ilk, people are going to form weird new bonds with it — and develop beliefs about its supposed internal life that are almost certain to cause strange new divisions in society. **More on AI:** [*Investor Says AI Is Already "Fully Replacing People"*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()